Green-gate coming to an end?

Anthony

Surprise, surprise.

Not only would the charge itself be massively difficult to prove, even before you could get any of the evidence in front of a jury, the whole thing would probably face abuse of process arguments by the defence that could see it thrown out. Melanie Phillips' posts on this topic provide plenty of food for thought on this.

jean baker

The Police clearly followed orders in the outrageous proceedings - made the 'fall guys'along with the Speaker.
There's a pattern to Nulabor's methods of 'reshuffling the pack' - undemocratically sacking and replacing service leaders.

Ivan Dunnow

What typically, sanctimonious tosh. Assuming - and God knows, it's a biggie - that the Screws *hasn't* just made this up, how exactly did they come by their 'scoop'? By having it neatly spoon fed to them by someone inside the CPS. How on earth is it not an outrage crying out to heaven* that our independent, politically neutral, has, just HAS-to-be-trustworthy prosecution service is in fact so corrupted (by the press) that it leaks like this to Sunday tabloid hacks? Whether or not money was involved, this is appalling behaviour. Details of ongoing criminal cases *should not* be leaked in this fashion. It's a genuine injustice, both to those involved, and to the pursuit of guilt or innocence. Why is this not self-evident to you?

*You know, almost as bad as the police treating Damian Green the way they would treat anyone else in his situation, and, er, are indeed perfectly legally entitled to treat MPs in his situation?

Andy Leeds

As Rod Liddle said in The Spectator, the Police are 'institutionally stupid'. They have been unbelievably idiotic in the way they handled this whole business and the chance of gaining a conviction was never there from the very word go.

Verity

"It seems remarkable how careless the police have been throughout this investigation ...".

Careless?

No. Arrogant. The arrogance of absolute power.

TGF UKIP

The Met Gestapo will not be allowed by their political masters to wrap this up. Labour are determined there will be charges and the DPP will be under severe pressure both from Straw and Smith to press forward.

Big test for the judicial system and for the DPP in particular. If they fail then we do have 1984, just 25 years late.

JONNY

Not sure TGF UKIP they would relish going forward to the publicity glare of a trial.
Too many foul and festering bones on their part, shoved under the shallow soil in panicky haste. Just waiting to be exhumed.

John Page

It's been obvious for a while that the CPS would never let this go to a trial. Even if a charge was legally watertight, there would be a huge risk of a jury not convicting, so failing the CPS criterion of a conviction being probable.

It's concerning that the Met don't seem to have been able to work this out for themselves.

Senior heads should roll. Were these plonkers really the best people Sir Ian Blair had to choose from?

Athesius the Facilitator

Can the Conservative party ask the police to investigate Gordon Brown. A crime must be "still a crime" even if it was committed 15 or so years ago. Micheal Gove has him nailed in that Telegraph article.

Frank P

"Were these plonkers really the best people Sir Ian Blair had to choose from?"

You would expect a plonker to choose other plonkers as his accolytes and he did.

The question that should be asked is why that plonker himself was chosen as Commissioner. Subsequent events have answered that question. Not so much wheels within wheels, but poodles with poodles.

philip smith

i've given up with the police a long time ago. they are merely an extension of social services. just look at the chief constables, jumped up social workers. thank the lord we still have the army, navy and airforce depite global-moses' best efforts to kill them off

mac

Ivan Dunnow.

"What typically, sanctimonious tosh". You missed out the words "follows is" after "What".

But hey, all this leaking and investigation business is reprehensible, isn't it, when the script hasn't produced the right outcome for G. Brown?

TGF UKIP

JONNY, agreed that neither the Met Gestapo nor Brown would actually want the case to get to a full court hearing. What will suffice for their spin and lie operation are charges. You can then imagine all the unctuous, sanctimonious soundbites and all the smears that will be dumped on Green. The matter can then fizzle out - CPS re-consider, lack of quite enough evidence etc.

Unfortunately, they know the Tories are so crap at rebuttal, they will be able to get away with it.

It is now impossible to be too cynical about this government or its gestapo.

They no full well that